He cursed himself for not realising sooner and reached for the first aid kit in his bag. Opening it, he reached for the one addition he’d made to the small kit a year ago: a bottle of witch hazel. His Great-Aunt Anaïs had instilled a deep respect for the stuff since he and Xander had been kids getting into scrapes at the chateau in the Dordogne. Pushing back the dark thoughts that always followed memories of his brother, he turned back to see Skye twisting her hair in her hand and wringing out drops of water.
He had absolutely no idea why the image of her hair wrapped around her fist shot fire through his body, and if it hadn’t been for her cuts and bruises he would have turned his back on her, walked out of the plane wreck and kept on walking all night if he’d had to.
‘Here. You need to clean those scratches.’
She looked up at him, her mouth curved into a tight smile. ‘And the bites,’ she replied. ‘I really am sorry about what happened. I must have fallen asleep in the car because I had planned to let you know I was there much sooner. But that’s no excuse.’
She’d held his gaze the entire time and he was impressed. The few people he encountered who were inept enough to make mistakes and needed to apologise never met his eyes—instead scurrying to find someone else to blame.
‘Let’s just make it through tonight and we can figure out everything later,’ he said, mentally counting down the hours until they could get to his home and she could phone for...for whatever or whoever would get her back home. He was still determined to rescue some of what would remain of his time in Costa Rica. Alone.
He pulled out a spare T-shirt from his rucksack and threw it to her.
‘Change into that,’ he said, immediately noticing the steel lengthen her spine at his command.
‘What about you?’ she asked, her eyes raking over the wet T-shirt plastered to his body.
His jaw clenched, one hundred per cent convinced that she genuinely didn’t know what effect that was having on him. ‘I guess I’ll have to grin and Bear Grylls it.’
The swift intake of breath that followed him out of the wreck spoke of embarrassment and outrage. Good. Muc
h better that than she have any softer feelings towards him. He placed their empty water bottles in secure places to catch the rainwater, while swearing to find out what she wanted as quickly as possible so that when they returned to the house she could leave.
Mortification heated her skin far more efficiently than the fire. The man must have hearing like a bat. He was the perfect predator. Eyesight, hearing, power, looks. Silently growling, she yanked her shirt down her arms and flinched when she heard a tear. She clamped her jaw together, just like she’d done as a child when she’d felt the threat of tears. She wouldn’t cry. Not here. Not now.
She was fine. Her sisters were safe. Her mother was happy for the moment and things would look different in the morning. It was only a few hours. Nothing bad could happen in a few hours.
Peeling herself out of the wet jeans, Skye cast a glance around the wreckage of the plane, wondering who it had belonged to and whether anyone had made it out alive. She shivered at the thought. The thin shards of sky she could make out through the cracked windowpanes in the cockpit showed a deepening inky blue. The rain had eased off, but she could still hear the patter of it hitting the body of the plane, which was oddly comforting. Familiar. Unlike every single other aspect of this situation.
The fire had begun to give out some heat and if she hadn’t been so hungry she might have fallen asleep. Instead, she hung her jeans, socks and shirt out to dry on various seats and twisted metal and was safely attired in his T-shirt when Benoit returned. Thankfully it was long enough to come halfway down her thighs. If she pulled it down by the hem.
She felt bad as she took in his rain-soaked clothes...until he pulled off his T-shirt and then... All thought stopped. Seriously. He was rich. Clearly defined abs spoke of hours at the gym. This was no lazy billionaire playboy. The dips and grooves expanded and retracted as he reached for something from his bag and when she saw the protein bars in his hand she wasn’t sure whether it was her stomach growling or her inner voice purring.
Purring? She never purred.
She slapped a cotton pad doused in witch hazel on the bite on her elbow and hoped that the sting would bring her back to her senses. He was digging in his bag with his back to her and for just a moment she indulged in watching the play of muscles in the shadows of the fire. He turned to her with something in his hand and she gasped.
‘You’re bleeding!’
He frowned, touching his hairline and pulling his hand away with fresh blood on his fingertips. ‘It’s nothing.’
‘It’s a head wound.’
‘It’s hardly a—’
‘Sit down,’ she commanded, channelling her feelings into anger at him for not saying anything. She swallowed her surprise when he actually did as she’d asked and ignored the wry raising of a single eyebrow.
She came around in front of the seat he had chosen, eyeing the cut that bordered his hairline, leaning and stepping forward slightly to get a better look. He tensed. ‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ she said, sounding as exasperated as she felt until she reached down to pick up the witch hazel and realised that she’d somehow stepped right in between his legs. Trying to ignore the sudden awareness of...him, his chest, his maleness, the heat coming off all that, she poured the clear liquid onto a cotton pad before reaching to lift a wave of hair, dark and slick with rain, away from the cut.
She squinted through the dim lighting in the cabin and saw a cut about two centimetres long but thankfully not wide. Cuts to the head always bled profusely, as she’d discovered early on with Summer, whose mind was always on a daydream rather than what was in front of her. And as her mother had a very different idea of what a medicine cabinet consisted of, Skye had become well versed in the use of herbal remedies, even if she’d always longed for proper painkillers and antiseptic cream.
‘This is going to—’
‘I’m not a—’
The word ‘child’ that would have come out of Benoit’s mouth was cut off as she whacked the cotton pad onto the cut and instead she heard a deeply satisfying hiss. Only then did she realise she was close enough to feel it on her cheek, and somehow on the hairs on her arms and shivering down her spine and shockingly deep within her core.
‘I’m surprised to find witch hazel in your first aid kit,’ she said, trying to ignore the pull she felt to him.